The face of beauty

All righty, so the article I chose to read was Pixel Perfect: Pascal Dangin’s Virtual Reality. I was both fascinated and infuriated by this article. To begin with, the article described Dangin as “the premier retoucher of fashion photographs. Art directors and admen call him when they want someone who looks less than great to look great, someone who looks great to look amazing, or someone who looks amazing already—whether by dint of DNA or M·A·C—to look, as is the mode, superhuman.”

So… I’m completely in awe of Dangin’s amazing artisitic and technological skill. He is indeed “the shit” when it comes to being the best at what he does. However, I’m appalled by the fact that Dangin basically sets the standards for what the media deems beautiful, therefore adding to the distortion of body image that is becoming so prevalent. But that’s not even the best part: whoever wrote the darn article had the nerve to include a photo of Dangin himself. I couldn’t help but think, “Holy Christ, our very body images are being dictated to us by a fat man who sits in the basement on his computer all day.” Now that’s a scary thought.

Wow… just wow…